Why Should You Update to Configuration Manager Current Branch 1610?

Posted by Melanie Ryan

January 13, 2017

In my most recent blog post, I mentioned that you should probably be keeping up to date with the current branch releases. The latest version of Configuration Manager current branch is 1610. It was released in November of 2016. If you have not updated to it yet, here is a quick recap of just a handful of the cool new features in it that you may find very useful.

Boundary group changes – no more ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ distribution points, no more ‘fallback’ distribution points. You now have much more control over which DPs a client uses, and when it might expand its search for DPs outside its local boundary group

Excluding clients from automatic client upgrade – you can now designate a collection of clients to not be upgraded automatically if you use the automatic client upgrade feature

Software Center branding – you can get various enhancements to color scheme and branding in Software Center depending on configuration of the Application Catalog website point site system role as well as any Microsoft Intune subscription

Software Center updates – users are now notified of new items and they can request applications from Software Center

Snooze and remind me – this option is now available in the Software Center popup for required deployments – much like the Outlook reminder’s “Snooze” feature

Grace period for required deployments – you can postpone some mandatory software deployments for a period of time if the computer has been offline for a long time (such as the user being on vacation)

Peer cache – clients can now share their downloaded content with other clients, saving other clients from having to download content from a remote distribution point